The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to diagnostic imaging systems, and more particularly to computed tomography (CT) diagnostic imaging systems.
In conventional gated CT imaging, for example, in gated cardiac CT imaging, each imaging view in each image slice acquired by the CT imaging system has to include all of the phases of the gating (e.g., gated image information for one complete cardiac cycle) to generate proper clinically relevant images. In cases where only the systole phase is imaged, all image views of each image slice must include valid systole data to generate proper images. Additional rotations are sometimes needed to fill in an empty imaging view where no image information was acquired. Some rotations may also include invalid data due to a bad electrocardiogram (ECG) signal. As a result of these errors and the need for additional gantry rotations, an increase in x-ray dose to the patient, an increase in time of acquisition and/or an increase in image artifacts may result.
In step and shoot imaging system where the patient is imaged while stopped at different axial locations, a loss of imaging time results due to the table motion, in particular having no image data acquired during table motion. Additionally, conventional detector arrays require high power x-ray sources that expose the patients to higher levels of radiation.
When imaging using CT imaging systems have two-dimensional (2D) detectors of arrays, several slices may be imaged during a single rotation, thereby reducing acquisition time. However, non-central slices are imaged in a slightly oblique axial angle resulting in difficulty during image reconstruction, image artifacts and/or non-uniform image quality among the image slices.